Excerpts from the Daily Mail article here:
Head of ‘Climategate’ research unit admits he hid data – because it was ‘standard practice’
The scientist at the heart of the ‘Climategate’ row over global warming hid data ‘because it was standard practice’, it emerged today.
Professor Phil Jones, director of the University of East Anglia’s prestigious climatic research unit, today admitted to MPs that the centre withheld raw station data about global temperatures from around the world.
The world-renowned research unit has been under fire since private emails, which sceptics claimed showed evidence of scientists manipulating climate data, were hacked from the university’s server and posted online.
Now, an independent probe is examining allegations stemming from the emails that scientists hid, manipulated or deleted data to exaggerate the case for man-made global warming.
Prof Jones today said it was not ‘standard practice’ in climate science to release data and methodology for scientific findings so that other scientists could check and challenge the research.
He also said the scientific journals which had published his papers had never asked to see it.
Appearing before the committee’s hearing into the disclosure of data from the CRU alongside Prof Jones, the university’s vice chancellor Prof Edward Acton said he had not seen any evidence of flaws in the overall science of climate change – but said he was planning this week to announce the chair of a second independent inquiry, which will look into the science produced at CRU.
h/t to WUWT reader Richard Lawson
UPDATE: Steven Mosher writes in comments about some relevant history that disproves Dr. Jones claim of “standard practice”:
==========================
OK. Everybody write the UEA committee.
Jones says its standard practice NOT to share data.
1. in 2002 PRIOR to the publication of MM2003 Jones shared
data with Mcintyre. Jones was aware of confidentiality agreements.
“Dear Steve,
Attached are the two similar files [normup6190, cruwld.dat] to those I sent before which should be for the 1994 version. This is still the current version until the paper appears for the new one. As before the stations with normal values do not get used.
I’ll bear your comments in mind when possibly releasing the station data for the new version (comments wrt annual temperatures as well as the monthly). One problem with this is then deciding how many months are needed to constitute an annual average. With monthly data I can use even one value for a station in a year (for the month concerned), but for annual data I would have to decide on something like 8-11 months being needed for an annual average. With fewer than 12 I then have to decide what to insert for missing data. Problem also applies to the grid box dataset but is slightly less of an issue.
I say possibly releasing above, as I don’t want to run into the issues that GHCN have come across with some European countries objecting to data being freely available. I would like to see more countries make their data freely available (and although these monthly averages should be according to GCOS rules for GAA-operational Met. Service.
Cheers
Phil Jones”
http://climateaudit.org/2009/08/06/a-2002-request-to-cru/
2. After the publication of MM03 he refused to share that data with Hughes in Feb 2005:a month after MM05 was published and a month after Wigly and he discussed ways to avoid FOIA. He refused
again with Mcintyre in 2007, citing confidentiality agreements.
3. Fully aware of the confidentiality agreements Jones shared the data
with Webster and with Rutherford.
His standard practice was this.
If Jones had no reason to suspect you as an individual he would violate confidentiality agreements and send you data. If jones didn’t like your results or your treatment of his co author Dr. Mann, then he would refuse you data.
There is nothing standard about this practice.
===================================
It appears once Dr. Jones learned that Steve McIntyre had skeptical views, his unwillingness to share data became “standard practice”. – Anthony
I trust funds granting agencies/institutions are boning up on the legalese pertaining to such concepts as “restitution” and “disgorgement.”
JimB (17:07:20) : “Me: Hey…I’ve found a way to create Gold out of pine needles”
Al Gore has indeed found a way to create Gold out of tree rings!
Mike (13:17:51) :
“Why would any sane person get their news from the Daily Mail”?
Because of articles by Richard Littlejohn
Every Brit should read his article today,funny but sad too.
Brown’s Britain 2015 and even the Queen has fled
Despite the dire financial crisis at home and the collapse of the currency abroad, which had seen petrol rise to £10 a litre (when available), Brown continues to pose as a world statesman.
But his plans to hold a ‘global warming’ summit in London in January 2012 had to be cancelled because of the continuing bad weather.
That month saw widespread power cuts, following the failure of Britain’s last decrepit nuclear power station and record low temperatures, which caused every single one of the 50,000 wind turbines erected across the country to freeze solid, snap in half and fall over.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1254697/RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN-Browns-Britain-2015-Queen-fled.html#ixzz0gyll4bWZ
Wren (15:35:34) :
“I don’t think pharmaceutical companies are required by FOI laws to give me their e-mails.”
1.) The FDA could certainly require access to emails.
2.) Any information in emails could be subject to a legal discovery process, not excluding FOIA. If the research was publicly funded, it would certainly be accessible to any public regulators and pubic granting agencies. Unless you have a really good excuse, and it better be really good.
Okay, freudian typo, “pubic granting agencies” above should be “public”. (Spell-checkers are evil!)
Re: Cadae (13:45:57)
You make a very good point. Traditionally in science you wouldn’t present your raw data because normally there is no need to as replication can be achieved simply by following the methodology with the same experimental setup. As this is not possible when your test subject is the earth however in order for there to be replication there must be disclosure of raw data and full methodology.
The bottom line is science demands replication and in climate science this demand necessitates the release of raw data.
I notice that the Daily Mail quotes have been changing a little, (‘data model’ has become ‘methodology’) and this is not a direct quote. It might be worth seeing what he actually said rather than a journalistic stylization of his words. The ‘Hide the data’ is just a headline with no attribution. But hey man, this is a witch hunt after all!
@Nick (12:29:22) and anyone else saying that the lack of data/method sharing is excusable or acceptable…
Imagine if you will an astronomer from an international astronomy organization in charge of determining threats to earth. This astronomer, with close friends of his, announce that they’ve discovered an unprecedented threat to earth, they say they’ve discovered a rock with our name on it, and it will hit sometime in the next 50-100 years. They use their influence in this organization to justify a multi-trillion-dollar effort at mitigating the asteroid threat. Many people the world over are convinced that we’re headed to catastrophe and we all must donate large portions of our income and sacrifice our lifestyles to avoid doom.
Now imagine if a single amateur astronomer had asked for the orbital parameters they have calculated for this asteroid, and asked for the raw datasets for calculating those parameters. Then imagine that the entire cadre of astronomers in that organization refused for nearly a decade to hand over any of their raw information that led them to conclude this supposed doomsday threat while publicly bashing anyone who disagreed with them and continuing to publish report after report detailing the doom mankind faces.
IF you can imagine that, then I say YOU are not a scientist. I know what I am, and while 2 degrees in physics doesn’t make me a “Scientist” per-se, it did teach me everything there is to know about how gains in scientific knowledge is supposed to work. Frankly, the argument that any temperature data, any tree-ring data, or any of these data-from-observing-the-earth datasets that were paid for by-and-large taxpayers that are then used to demonstrate a catastrophe should by-definition BE PUBLIC DOMAIN. Any claim otherwise is lunacy.
These men have claimed for years that the entire human race is headed for doom and instead of showing their work, they stonewalled, lied, and gamed peer-review for years. They are criminals.
“That about cover it?”
Yup, that about covers it.
Anyone who thinks that Doktor Jones is going to get what he deserves is unaware of the way governments in the West operate. In China or Iran he would be given a fair trial and taken out and shot (or beheaded) for embarassing the government by getting caught and being exposed as a hack. In the West, a’la Penn State, he will be given a budget of 400% more than he already has in order to hire additional personnel to answer the phones, the mail (e and slow), and run 10 new copy machines (Made in China); he will also be required to provide the Select Committee on Climate an annual report on Global Warming with detailed recommendations on methods to rectify the problems of Climate Change.
All of you seem to be suggesting methods to rectify the Jonesgate Problem that have not been used for the last 40 years. Didn’t you get our telegram?
D. King (17:08:58) :
I guess the data, programs and processes are all transparent,
when you can’t see them. Makes sense!
======
Transparency is a window not a one-way mirror. All climate – related communications of those who attack the science and the scientists should be public. McIntyre, Wegman, Barton, Inhof, Morano, and others should have no objection to full disclosure of their e-mails and other correspondence.
“Nick (12:29:22) :
Not many scientists here, are there?”
Anyone can study physics, chemistry and geology, might not have the Ph. D., but you can study it and understand it.
But tell me, what is difficult about and how much of a scientist does one need to be to read a thermometer?
Showing on BBC news right now (BBC2 or dedicated BBC24 news channel)
Phil JNones looking v nervous, as well he might – not getting an easy ride at all
(will prob be repeated throughout the night on BBC24 news)
Meanwhile, this is the kind of consequence we can expect from the degree of terror which has been instilled in people: this couple clearly saw no future for their children
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/argentina/7344329/Baby-survives-parents-global-warming-suicide-pact.html
Didn’t some of the journals violate their own policies by failing to require it? Not asking to follow the terms which both parties had publicly agreed to does not mean that it is OK to not follow the rules. And the journals’ rules show that sharing data is standard practice.
It was standard practice not to share data during the Nixon administration.
Then imagine that the entire cadre of astronomers in that organization refused for nearly a decade to hand over any of their raw information
Oh, the humanity!
Look, even if this whole CRU matter is exactly what you are all saying it is, a multi-decadal con job, a scam, a grift… HadCRUT is not the only data set. There are terabytes in the public domain.
Is somebody going to go do the analysis at some point, or are you just going to keep badgering scientists?
J Zulauf (16:14:26) :
“Not many scientists here, are there?”
My Masters degree was in Computational Fluid Dynamics. In my thesis there is every step in the derivation of the PDE’s used, a complete detailed description of the flux-split, predictor-corrector, time stepping integrator (including stability analysis), a comparison to the results to a known, closed-form problem, and every single line of glorious FORTRAN77 used to implement it *including* the plotting library I wrote to graph it.
During the review process, somebody asked to see every single bit of it and *that* was just for a Master’s degree.
———-
I’ll bet that wasn’t because the reviewers wanted to find flaws they could use to discredit your research and malign you in the public eye for political purposes.
I haven’t seen the raw data Jones used and the finished results of his work. I imagine he has a methodology that explains what he did. Until I know more about it, I can’t say he did a good job or a bad job.
Ibrahim (12:23:14)
Nature has a policy requiring data archiving which they routinely ignore for “big name” climate scientists. The same is true of Science Magazine.
Channel 4 has a … unique…… spin on the hearings:
“The professor was challenged about an email to a climate change sceptic, in which he admits he doesn’t want to send him data because he was worried it would be misused.”
I guess showing that his findings were erroneous could be consider “misuse”.
ref: http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/science_technology/climategate+jones+admits+to+aposawful+emailsapos/3566357
Nick (12:29:22) : edit
Absolute nonsense. While there is no obligation to archive your intermediate calculations as you say, both Nature and Science and a host of other journals have requirements that the original data be archived. And more and more, journals are also requiring the archiving of code. This is because a verbal description of the code is totally inadequate for determining what the original author actually did.
Without access to the code and data, the errors in the Hockeystick would never have been revealed. While independent confirmation using different datasets and code is also part of science, in climate science there is often only one dataset. Lonnie Thompson has published papers on his ice core data … and without access to that data (which he refuses to give), we can never say if he has produced valid work or junk.
So your comment, “not many scientists here”, merely reveals that you haven’t thought about the difficulties of climate science. Sure, if you are describing an experiment on an orange, any scientist can repeat the experiment. But if you are describing conclusions on data that the “scientist” refuses to share, that can never be repeated.
Wren (18:39:08)
That was a joke. Let me rephrase it.
You can’t see the data, programs and processes, because they are transparent.
Philemon (17:56:42) :
Wren (15:35:34) :
“I don’t think pharmaceutical companies are required by FOI laws to give me their e-mails.”
1.) The FDA could certainly require access to emails.
2.) Any information in emails could be subject to a legal discovery process, not excluding FOIA. If the research was publicly funded, it would certainly be accessible to any public regulators and pubic granting agencies. Unless you have a really good excuse, and it better be really good.
======
Sure, and that’s the way it should be, but I doubt a company would be compelled to release it’s e-mails to me simply because I wanted to see them.
Under UK FOI law, there are about 20 reasons for not honoring requests for information.
http://www.foi.gov.uk/guidance/exguide/index.htm
I get the same story from some professionals in special education. “Don’t put the student’s name on the protocol. Shred it after you have done your report”. BS! Climate data is one thing, but labeling a student for their entire educational career in public education is another! %&*^$(*^)*_(&R^^^!!!!!!! Sped teachers should be required to keep the raw data until a student is 21 years old. Period. Anything less is #^%*&^*&^^%%&^!
Wren (19:03:01),
You have absolutely zero understanding of how the scientific method is designed to work.
It is incumbent upon even those putting forth a new hypothesis to do their level best to find anything possible wrong with it. In other words, to be skeptical, and to falsify it, if they can. Whatever is left standing is accepted science.
Had the promoters of the CAGW hypothesis followed the scientific method, their reputations would have remained unsullied. There is nothing wrong or dishonorable in having a hypothesis falsified. What is wrong is subverting the scientific method in return for money and fame. The result isn’t science, it is politics based on the Big Lie, repeated endlessly to a public that doesn’t even understand what “carbon” means.
You presume to know everyone’s hidden motivations when you state that the reviewers wanted to find flaws they could use to discredit Jones’ research and malign him in the public eye for political purposes.
There may be some schadenfreude now, but that’s simply the result of being lied to for the past fifteen years. And even that would quickly evaporate if Jones decided to come clean. But he’s still in denial, just like most of his apologists.
Had Jones, Mann and the rest been open with skeptical scientists [FYI: the only honest kind of scientists] from the very beginning, instead of stonewalling over a hundred FOIA requests, and refusing to share their data and methods, and strategizing about how to game the peer review process, and how to punish journals and board members who didn’t fall into lock step with their planetary catastrophe fantasy, they wouldn’t need to be backing and filling now in a desperate attempt to extricate themselves the reality that is closing in on them.
Willis! Hear! Hear! I still have my raw data table. When I presented my results to the lab committee I presented that raw data table. From there I presented my ANOVA and CO-ANOVA (which I did by hand with just a calculator as well as run it through the lab’s statistician’s DOS program, which used chadded cards).
Another researcher wanted a looksee at my raw data after reading my thesis. I gladly handed it over. He ran it and confirmed it. Eventually, he ended up as a co-author on our journal article.
Anything less than this kind of cooperation is just bratty. If you do good research, it will stand up to this kind of test. If it doesn’t stand up, consider yourself damn lucky that someone warned you before you embarrassed yourself.